Where does one start the quests for Drane's armor?

While Drane's armor is good, don't get me wrong...I went through the painful faction grind in Celestine Ward for 12 levels to not only get the faction but ALL of the pieces of my gear. I would personally recommend doing the Arena in Qualia and getting gear that way till you hit 50 and can get your gear from Rahz Inkur.

I wore the Drane's armor up to that point so don't get me wrong it is good, but it is such a pain I wish I would have skipped it. The only thing I may recommend there would be to get max faction (maybe get a sorc and healer buddy to team up and aoe the bloodhowlers) and get the shurikens. However, you don't really need to upgrade them either, they give a lil more range than any other shuriken out there, but the damage is still busted and has been since beta. It reads it should be doing 1469-1469 dmg, but they really only do about 500 avg on a mob right now. Given if you get a legendary hit it does good damage, its just not really worth the grind.

If you have questions about the CW info, I'll be glad to help, but like I said, I recommend elsewhere. It is really just a long grind for items that are easily replaced or that you can even get comprable drops rather quickly.

So where should a new lvl 30 go for exp and armor upgrades if not wardship ?  The Arena ?  I thought if you start wardhip at lvl 30 and gain levels while you do faction etc you would end up with armor and lvl 40?  Is there a better plan ?

As an alternative to Drane's, you could do the Bounty Hunter quests, which start near the River Palace riftway. The chest and legs items are nearly as good as the Wardship varieties, and you'll only need to spend about two hours with a full group to get them. You should be able to do these around 32ish.

The arena is in Seawatch Coast, just go to khal and port to Strandon Port and you will see it as you get off the docks.

Cragwind is somewhere near CIS I believe, heven't been there in a while so I can't gaurantee it.

Celestine Ward is on Thestra, I'm guessing you haven't yet activated the riftway so until you do the fastest way there would be to port to New Targanor then to boat all the way to Vol tuniel and head North. There are alson paths you can take straigh out of NT on your horse so either way works. Vol Tuniel has a riftway you can activate and then be able to go there from any of the 2nd network riftways.

You're not too low to grind in the Arena. You're too low to complete the quests. That as such is not such an issue as it seems, as you can already start collecting the 5k coins you'll need to get various gear from the quest when you DO hit the level.

arena coins you recieve from certain mobs and from arena tickets. Coins are what are used to turn in quests for the gear and weapons that are around inside the arena. There is also a horse and a repair bot you can get.

Look around INSIDE the arena for Suspicious Spectators, they are 2 dots and drop 1 coin a piece. Then look for the named mobs like scurvy is at the bottom where tickets are performed, Trakano spawns in the middle (u need to go up the ramp for) next to the repair bot quest giver (you will know who he is by the repair o matic standing in front of him.) Keep looking for others such as them, they will be yellow to start out, but talk to them hail them or whatnot and then you will be able to attack. Be sure to watch their cons before attacking. Trakano and Mr. Briggs are definitely NOT soloable...even at 50!

Some of those named you will kill, have a chance of dropping a bronze, silver, gold or platinum ticket. Each of which are eventsto be spawned in the middle of the arena. Only one event can be spawned at a time. Bronze will give about 6 coins at completion, silver 20 (i think) gold 60 and plat 100! You will need a group in order to comlete the events.

Also, if you head north from the arena you will see a few little area with the same looking creatures as what trakano looks like. Those also drop coins and tickets. There are quests for them as well you may want to do.

There are plaenty of 2 dots just outside the arena to grind on if you would like, but I really recommend killing the mobs that get you coins.

Tip: don't pick up the quests for armor and stuff till you have the coins, look at them all and get a good idea of what number coins you need. When you have enough, go back accept quest, turn in quest. Reason for this: Every time you pick up a coin, it wll lag you out a lil as it will update EVERY one of your quests. So if you have 3 quests that say you need 100 coins, every time you pick up coin, it will say 1/100 arena coins 3 times. It cases a lil lag and looting to be slow.

go to the riftway and check out the quests they have around there.

I hope this helps, let me know if you need anymore specifics